Four forces are reshaping how consumers discover, decide and spend

McKinsey's State of the Consumer 2026 identifies four structural shifts redefining the sector: the AI- and social-media-driven path to purchase, a broadening health revolution, the continued primacy of experiences over goods, and the rise of the resourceful consumer who trades down selectively rather than uniformly. On brand visibility: only 1% of sources cited by LLMs in consumer goods queries come from brand-owned websites, a finding that reframes what "showing up" means in an AI-mediated discovery environment. The four trends are individually well-documented; what the report does well is show how they interact. A consumer who is health-conscious, price-sensitive, and navigating AI-mediated discovery is one consumer, not many. And the brands that treat them as such will earn the right to be chosen.